Re-Wire Your Brain

Your brain learns whatever is repeated. And unfortunately, thanks to the human brain’s negativity bias, we tend to notice, focus on, and repeat negative things. And it’s so automatic, we often don’t notice it, and even if we do, we may not know how to offset it. And, oh ya, depression and excessive anxiety make this bias worse. Ugh. Fortunately, thanks to what’s known as neuroplasticity we can change this brain bias. The trick is to keep it simple because you have to REPEAT IT. It’s in the repetition that the changes in your brain occur.

A brilliant and crafty tool to make your brain recognize that some things actually did go well, even amongst the muck of life: Every night (or next morning) write down 3 things that went well that day and why. Do this for 6 months. That’s it. This will lower depression (proven in studies) and increase self-esteem.

This tool is great if you tend to be hard on yourself, have high expectations of yourself, and skew towards perfectionism.

The why is important. The why is how you start to build an understanding of your strengths - ones you already have and ones you’re developing. This exercise also trains your brain to recognize that things did go well, which is especially helpful when you’re dealing with depression or anxiety. Actually, all humans naturally tend to focus on the negative, and this simple and enjoyable exercise forces you to do the opposite. And it only takes a few minutes!

I learned this from watching a presentation by Dr. Martin Seligman, president of the American Psychological Association (1998) and developer of the PERMA model (2012). Go to minute 9:30 on the video below.

Mindset is kind of hilarious actually. You know the saying “I woke-up on the wrong side of the bed”? Well, that’s mindset. And sometimes, rather than trying to evaluate why you have an unhelpful mindset at any given time, just change it. Yep, it’s kind of that easy sometimes (not always, but sometimes).

Ways to change your mindset:

1. Music

   This really works.

2. People

3. Try this weird “priming” exercise from Tony Robbins